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On February 10, 2015, Americans for Peace and Tolerance launched its “Countering Violent Deception” campaign with a full page ad and an opinion column in the Washington Times. The campaign’s purpose is to draw attention to concerns about the Obama administration’s “Countering Violent Extremism” initiative, announced in 2011 and fast tracked after the Paris attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Casher kosher supermarket. The White House’s announcement of a conference on “Countering Violent Extremism,” to take place on February 18th, names Boston as one of the pilot cities where law enforcement officials have developed partnerships with Muslim community leaders. Unfortunately, to counter “violent extremism,” Federal agencies in Boston are working with the Islamic Society of Boston and its political arm, the Muslim American Society, which both have links to many extremists who are either in jail, in flight from federal authorities, or have been killed during terrorist attacks. Indeed, as APT research has shown, both the ISB and the MAS are Muslim Brotherhood entities that indoctrinate their followers with radical Islamist ideology. Far from being a model, Boston should serve as a cautionary tale – about deception and denial. To counter today’s “violent extremism” we need to deal with the root cause – the spread of Islamist ideology. At the same time, instead of the administration’s extremist partners, we must embrace the true moderate Muslims who can defend America by proactively countering the radicalizing doctrines that reach into their communities.

President Obama’s project to “combat violent extremism,” to be showcased in a Washington “summit” on Feb. 18, cites Boston as one of three model cities that can lead the way.

That will be a problem: The central Muslim institution that Boston law enforcement agencies are partnering with against extremism is itself extremist.

The Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) and its political arm, the Muslim American Society, seen as the go-to groups for civic and law enforcement partnerships, have links to many extremists who are either in jail, in flight from federal authorities, or have been killed during terrorist attacks.

In Boston, deception and self-deception have ruled: The first Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge was founded in 1982 by Abdulrahman Alamoudi, a man who convinced both Presidents Bush and Clinton that he was a moderate, but who turned out to be a Muslim Brotherhood operative. He is now serving a 23-year prison term for raising money for al Qaeda.

For decades, ISB radicals have cultivated Muslim students from Boston’s schools and campuses. Some became notorious jihadis. Aafia Siddiqui, a highly regarded ISB congregant at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, raised money for al Qaeda at Boston mosques and, as “Lady al Qaeda,” became the most wanted woman in the world. Arrested in 2009 in Afghanistan with plans for a mass casualty attack on New York City, she opened fire on FBI agents and is now serving 86 years in prison for attempted murder.

Starting in 2000, with millions of Saudi dollars, the Islamic Society of Boston built its second mosque in Roxbury, the largest mosque on the Eastern Seaboard. When it emerged that Yusuf Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, was a founding trustee, the ISB told Boston officials that his name on their documents was “a clerical error.”

When informed that federal authorities labeled the Muslim American Society “an overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Boston officials again turned a blind eye. Qaradawi calls for the genocide of Jews and the murder of homosexuals. Interpol has a warrant for his arrest on charges of incitement to murder.

Meanwhile, several Boston Muslim youths, inculcated with the theology of jihadism, have acted upon their convictions. Tarek Mehanna, an Islamic Society of Boston congregant who planned a machine-gun jihad attack on a mall in Attleboro, Massachusetts, was convicted in 2011 of providing material support to al Qaeda and is now serving 17 years in federal prison. Ahmad Abousamra, indicted with Mehanna, fled to Syria in 2006 where he resurfaced as an Islamic State “social media guru.” Islamic Society of Boston congregant Rezwan Ferdaus, arrested in 2011 for planning to send remote-controlled airplane bombs into the U.S. Capitol, pleaded guilty and is serving 17 years in federal prison.

Several Islamic Society of Boston-Muslim American Society leaders themselves turned out to have been jihad supporters. Oussama Ziade, a major ISB donor indicted in 2009 for dealing with terrorist funds, is a fugitive living in Lebanon. According to The Times of India, Hafiz Masood, a Muslim American Society religious leader deported for immigration offenses, raised money and recruited people in Boston for his brother’s terrorist group, which committed the Mumbai massacre. Now in Pakistan, he is the terror group’s director of communications.

Then there are the Boston Marathon bombers. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, caught on surveillance tape placing a bomb, changed his persona, according to his ex-girlfriend, after joining the ISB: “One minute he was a normal guy, the next minute he is watching these crazy Muslim videos.” His brother Dzhokhar, who occasionally attended the Islamic Society of Boston, allegedly helped place and detonate the bombs that killed four and injured 264.

Some leaders of the Islamic Society of Boston-Muslim American Society, who are meant to partner with Boston law enforcement in Mr. Obama’s program, have defended Siddiqui, Mehanna and Masood as victims of a supposed American war on Muslims. All along, the Islamic Society of Boston has hosted speakers and programs that preach Islamic supremacism and hatred. The recently resigned Imam Suhaib Webb, who for years ran the Roxbury mosque, promotes a national program, called “Young Muslims of the Islamic Circle of North America,” which educates American Muslim youth in classical and modern jihad ideology.

Islamic Society of Boston leaders work with senior levels of Massachusetts law enforcement in order to advance their own agenda. In 2010, the Massachusetts attorney general’s office publicly accepted a $50,000 grant from ISB Imam Abdullah Faaruuq to establish Muslim “sensitivity training” for the police. Under the program’s guidelines, law enforcement officers are barred from studying radical Islamist ideology as a motive for the violent extremism that the president’s program is supposed to counter. Imam Faaruuq was later found on tape urging Boston Muslims to “pick up the gun and the sword to defend Aafia “Lady al Qaeda” Siddiqui, who was then on trial.

Far from being a model, Boston should serve as a cautionary tale — about deception and denial. To counter today’s “violent extremism” we need to deal with the root cause — the spread of Islamist ideology. Those who promote and enable Islamist ideology should not be able to do so in secret. How many more Muslim children will be poisoned and turned into terrorists, and how may American lives will be lost before we demand to know what is being taught in America’s Islamic communities and who is doing the teaching? We must embrace the true moderate Muslims who can defend America by proactively countering the radicalizing doctrines that reach into their communities.

Charles Jacobs is president and Ilya Feoktistov is research director of Americans For Peace and Tolerance.

Wales Online reported November 30th, that Michael Adebowale, one of the two men convicted of murdering British Army drummer Lee Rigby by running him over with a car and then cutting his throat while yelling quranic verses trained at an Islamic seminary institution with ties to Muslim Brotherhood chief jurist Yusuf Al Qaradawi:

A controversial Muslim cleric who supports suicide bombers was behind the curriculum at a top Islamic college in Wales where one of Lee Rigby’s killers studied, it’s emerged. The work of Egyptian Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who was banned from Britain in 2008, helped shape courses at the Llanybydder-based European Institute of Human Sciences attended by Michael Adebowale. As well as backing suicide attacks on Israelis chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars Al-Qaradawi is reported to have said it’s okay to beat women “lightly”, lash gays and suggested rape victims should be punished if dressed immodestly.

The European Institute of Human Sciences (EIHS) is directly tied to the Global Muslim Brotherhood as the UK branch of the France-based Institut Européen des Sciences Humaines (IESH), which is directly tied to the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Federation of Islamic Organizations of Europe (FIOE) according to the Intelligence digest Global Muslim Brotherhood Watch. EIHS openly lists the MB-linked IESH, FIOE, and the European Council on Fatwa and Research (ECFR) as “useful links” on their website. EIHS was noted for its troublesome times to Qaradawi as early as 2005, causing the University of Wales to sever its ties. Despite these known connections, British police referred to the school as having a “moderate ethos” and a government report concluded that the attacks could not have been prevented. Nor was this school’s first run in with terror ties:

Courses run by the European Institute of Human Sciences draw on the teachings of Egyptian Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who the Home Office is currently deciding whether to ban from Britain. Politicians have demanded an investigation into the school as questions grow over its allegiances. Principal Kadhem al-Rawi is an acquaintance of Magdi al-Nashar, the chemist arrested on suspicion of involvement in the 7/7 London bombings. Mr al-Rawi paid tribute to him following his arrest last week, describing him as having “a great personality”. And one of the school’s trustees Ahmad al-Rawi has declared British troops are a legitimate target for Iraqi militants.

The connection between terrorist violence and Muslim Brotherhood-controlled venues for indoctrination, and the inability of Law enforcement to draw that connection is sadly unsurprising, and the United Kingdom is not alone in it. Here in the United States, it was Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) who pointed out in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing that the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB), attended by the Tsarnaev Brothers, had ties to convicted al Qaeda financier and self-identified Muslim Brother Abdurahman Alamoudi. One of its founding trustees of ISB was, as at EIHS, Yousef Al Qaradawi. ISB has also produced Al Qaeda propagandist and would be terrorist Tarek Mehenna, and “Lady Al Qaeda” Afia Siddique, along with Islamic State propagandist Ahmad AbouSamra.The mosque attended by Oklahoma beheader Alton Nolen, the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City was likewise founded by convicted Hamas financier and Muslim Brother Mufiq Abdulqader, half brother of Khaled Mashaal, and had close ties to the Council on American Islamic Relations.

Another example is the Dar al-Hijrah mosque, former home of Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki, Al Qaeda ideologue, and connected to the Muslim American Society (MAS), an organization, close to Qaradawi, whose own founders admitted their Muslim Brotherhood connection, and which Al-Amoudi told federal investigators, “Everybody knows MAS is Muslim Brotherhood.” Dar Al-Hijrah was the mosque of Fort Hood Shooter Nidal Hassan, Attempted assassin of President Bush Ahmed Omar Abu Ali- Material support for Al Qaeda, and former CAIR employee Randal Ismail Royer, part of the “paintball Jihad plot” to join terrorist group Laskar-e-Taiba, the group which perpetrated the Mumbai Massacre.

To stop terrorism, law enforcement must be permitted to focus its attention not just on the triggermen, those who are difficult to pick out until the moment they pick up the gun or the knife, but they must be able to focus their attention on the men who create the mosques and seminaries where such men are trained and indoctrinated for jihad.

Reports tying worshipers at U.S. mosques in Massachusetts and Minnesota to the ISIS terror network in Syria have opened up old wounds among Muslims in America and prompted new questions about how well the FBI monitors mosques with radical leanings.

The Islamic Society of Boston, the same mosque attended by the two Tsarnaev brothers accused of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, 2013, has now been tied to ISIS.

One of the members the brothers may have come in contact with was Ahmad Abousamra, a 32-year-old man who once frequented the Boston mosque and now serves as the chief propagandist for ISIS. The gruesome videos of ISIS militants beheading American journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley apparently were the handiwork of Abousamra.

“The Islamic Society of Boston has been, historically, one of the most radical mosques in the United States,” said Steve Emerson, who has authored six books on Islamic extremism and serves as executive director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism. “I’ve been investigating them for more than 20 years while CNN has been defending them for 20 years.”

Emerson said the FBI finds it difficult to penetrate the mosques and find recruiters.

“They’re very slick in the way they operate. Their Facebook pages are clean. They are very careful in how they communicate electronically, and they’re pretty wise in terms of appearing suspicious to potential informants,” he said. “So you really have got to either infiltrate a recruiting plot, if you can, or you have to find evidence of it electronically, or you need an informant to come forward and say, ‘They’re recruiting in our mosque.’”

Emerson said the Boston mosque was linked as early as the late 1990s to groups connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, “but nothing was done and it turned out that you have at least seven or eight people convicted of terrorism charges while dozens of others from this mosque have been investigated.”

The infamous Aafia Siddiqui, known as “Lady al-Qaida,” attended the Boston mosque before she was convicted of plotting terrorism, as did Imam Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the spiritual guides of global Muslim Brotherhood doctrines.

But the FBI was “thoroughly derelict” in investigating the Tsarnaev brothers, Emerson said. After Russia tipped off the bureau about the brothers’ radical leanings, he said the FBI reached out to mosque leaders to build a dialogue but failed to monitor mosque teachings.

WND reported last week on how the FBI has scrubbed its internal training manuals of all references to radical Islam after it was pressured to do so in 2011 by 56 Muslim-American organizations, including several with known ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, in late August, 70 Islamic-American groups have again written a letter to the White House demanding that all law enforcement at the federal, state and local levels audit and purge their materials of anything deemed to be biased against Muslims.

“Anyone in the intelligence agencies, with the restrictions of not being able to look at radical Islam and not even being able to use that term ‘radical Islam,’ it’s only going to stop us from pre-empting attacks,” Emerson said.

Amir Meshal

The strange case of Amir Meshal

The situation is equally dire at the Al Farooq Youth and Family Center in Bloomington, Minnesota. At least 12 Muslims from Minnesota have left the country to fight for ISIS in Syria, the FBI acknowledges, while 20 to 30 have joined al-Shabab, a terrorist group based in Somalia, since 2007.

The government believes some of the 12 ISIS fighters may have been recruited, either in person or online, by 31-year-old Amir Meshal, a native of New Jersey. The FBI has been well acquainted with him since 2007, when he was detained for about four months in Kenya but never charged. He allegedly admitted he attended an al-Qaida training camp, learned about various weapons and served as a translator but was not arrested. Instead, the FBI dumped Meshal back in New Jersey, after which the ACLU, in cooperation with the Council on Islamic American Relations, or CAIR, sued the U.S. government for violating Meshal’s civil rights.

KMSP-TV in Minneapolis reported Meshal claims in the lawsuit to have been recruited by the FBI as an informant, and he could have been working as a double agent for both the FBI and for ISIS. In exchange for providing information, he may have been taken off the government’s no-fly list, the TV station reported.

Meshal reportedly showed up this summer at the Al Farooq mosque in Bloomington. Sometime in late June or early July, an 18-year-old boy was stopped by authorities trying to depart the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on a flight to Turkey. The boy fingered Meshal as his recruiter.

In June, the parents of another teenage boy reported to the mosque’s leadership that Meshal was preaching a radical jihadist philosophy to their son. That’s when then the mosque called police and banned Meshal from returning.

She pointed out Meshal was detained in 2007 for his ties to al-Qaida, “after young Muslims went missing and it became news that the Twin Cities are seething with jihadists, part of the ‘terror pipeline’ as it’s now colloquially called.”

So, she emphasized, the mosque didn’t ban him until after the boy’s parents complained.

The New York Post’s Paul Sperry reported Sunday that the media director of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) maybe a former Boston resident named Ahmad Abousamra. Abousamra was an attendee at the same infamous Boston-area mosque that played host to Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Not only that but Abousamra’s father, was a board member at the mosque, according to Sperry.

The Islamic Society of Boston, founded by self-identified Muslim Brother and convicted Al Qaeda financier Abdulrahman Alamoudi featured Muslim Brotherhood chief jurist Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, famous for authorizing the use of Hamas suicide bombings and the killing of American civilians in Iraq, as a trustee. Other terrorist alum from ISB include Tarek Mehenna, a long time friend of Abousamra, and “Lady Al Qaeda” Aafia Siddiqui, whose release ISIS demanded as part of their negotiations over the fate of executed American journalist James Foley.

The ISB mosque was the same one that U.S. Representative from Texas Louie Gohmert questioned then FBI director Robert Mueller over in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, which led Mueller to admit that while he was unaware that the elder Tsarnaev attended the mosque, the FBI had done “outreach” there.

This preference for outreach to, rather than investigation of, groups (and mosques) associated with the Muslim Brotherhood will only worsen if efforts to hamper U.S. government’s use of informants in and around mosques are successful. This campaign, called the Safe Spaces Initiative, is led by the Muslim Public Affairs Council, but has received assistance from a wide variety of Islamic and left-wing organizations, including Human Right’s Watch (HRW). HRW recently launched a major campaign to prohibit the use of informants in tandem to the MPAC effort. The HRW’s poster boy for that campaign was convicted terrorist James Cromitie, who was the center of a terrorist plot given a recent whitewashing by the HBO documentary “The Newburgh Sting.” As CSP has documented elsewhere, Cromitie was a man committed to the doctrine of shariah, who desired to engage in jihad. The fact that defense allegations of entrapment were demolished by a court has not stopped HRW from attempting to re-characterize the case as one of FBI malfeasance. Like the false allegations of illegal surveillance of Muslim suspects, these campaigns seek to use public opinion to force law enforcement and national security officials from engaging in the necessary, and legally authorized, work of protecting the country.

How many Abousamaras, Mehennas, Tsarnaevs, and Siddiquis are out there, who will not be uncovered until it is to late because the hands of law enforcement have been tied to a failed strategy of outreach?

Some major names in terrorism, including the Boston Marathon Bombers and the man behind the ISIS beheadings, have worshipped at the Islamic Society of Boston, located in Cambridge, Mass.Photo: Douglas Healey

By Paul Sperry:

When it was revealed that the Boston Marathon bombers attended a Cambridge, Mass., mosque, its leaders were quick to disavow their actions.

Elder brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s ideology was not their own, the leaders of the Islamic Society mosque claimed. In fact, he was admonished for an extremist outburst he made during one sermon.

So, one crackpot in a congregation. Who can blame the mosque?

But what about eight — including a prominent member of ISIS?

As it turns out, worshippers at the Islamic Society have included:

Abdurahman Alamoudi, the mosque’s founder and first president who in 2004 was sentenced to 23 years in prison for plotting terrorism. In 2005, the Treasury Department issued a statement saying Alamoudi raised money for al Qaeda in the US.

Aafia Siddiqui, an MIT scientist-turned-al Qaeda agent, who in 2010 was sentenced to 86 years in prison for planning a New York chemical attack. Known as “Lady al Qaeda,” she is related to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. ISIS has tried to trade her release for journalist hostages.

Tarek Mehanna, who in 2012 got 17 years in prison for conspiring to use automatic weapons to murder shoppers in a suburban Boston mall.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a mosque trustee and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader banned from the US after issuing a fatwa that called for the killing of US soldiers.

Jamal Badawi, another former trustee who in 2007 was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a plan to funnel more than $12 million to Palestinian suicide bombers.

Now it can be revealed that another regular worshipper at the Islamic Society mosque was Ahmad Abousamra, who is now the top propagandist for ISIS.

Abousamra’s father, a prominent doctor, even sat on the board of directors of the Muslim organization that runs the mosque. He stepped down after the FBI began questioning his son.

The FBI suspects Abousamra now operates ISIS’s sophisticated media wing promoting the group’s beheadings and other atrocities through slick videos posted on the Internet. The brutally effective English-language propaganda campaign has helped attract thousands of Western jihadists, including at least 300 Americans.

The FBI says Abousamra, 32, traveled to Pakistan and Yemen to train to kill Americans while enrolled at Boston colleges. He justified murdering civilians because “they paid taxes to support the government and were kufar [nonbelievers],” Boston FBI Agent Andrew Nambu testified in an affidavit.

Another agent, Heidi Williams, says Abousamra, who has a $50,000 bounty on his head, was inspired by the 9/11 attacks and, in fact, “celebrated it.”

Where did he learn his views about Islam and jihad? A federal indictment says he even plotted to randomly gun down shoppers, then emergency responders, in a Boston mall. But when he couldn’t obtain the automatic weapons for the attack, he abandoned the plan and moved to Syria where he could enter Iraq and kill US soldiers as part of “violent jihad.”

The Islamic Society insists it’s moderate — that these extremists were fed by online forums. But Charles Jacobs, head of Boston’s Americans for Peace and Tolerance, says the mosque has hosted pro-jihad speakers and has stocked its library with classic jihadi texts — including writings by Osama bin Laden mentor Syed Qutb.

And Islamic Society leaders have openly defended their worshippers convicted of terrorism — including Siddiqui and Mehanna — despite overwhelming evidence against them. At their hearings and trials, officials have sought their release or lenient sentences. They have also held fund-raisers and rallies for the terrorists.

The women’s rights catastrophe in the Muslim world has reached America. Islamist groups and preachers in the U.S. are directly legitimizing the abuse of women or indirectly through advocacy of sharia law, and Muslims and non-Muslims, men and women, must hold them accountable.

Exhibit A is the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA), a group based in California that fashions itself as an authoritative voice of matters of Islamic law. It issues fatwas, or religious declarations, in response to questions from Muslims seeking guidance. Its website has a fatwa bank that will shock anyone concerned about women’s rights.

A fatwa published in 2010 justifies the practice of female genital mutilation:

“Some extremists from the West and their devout followers in the Muslim world would like to brand all circumcision as female genital mutilation (FGM) … all of their propaganda about female circumcision is no more than bigotry.”

“As for the issue of forcing a wife to have sex, if she refuses, this would not be called rape, even though it goes against natural instincts and destroys love and mercy, and there is a great sin upon the wife who refuses.”

One reason AMJA advises Muslims against joining law enforcement is because they “might have to arrest a Muslim man whose wife said he ‘raped’ her or forced her.” Another reason is the possibility of “gender mixing.”

AMJA is not a fringe organization whose influence is limited to the walls of its headquarters.

AMJA’s Fatwa Committee includes Dr. Muwaffak Al-Ghaylany, the President of the League of Imams in North America and Imam of the Islamic Center of Grand Blank City in Michigan.

Another AMJA Fatwa Committee member is Dr. Waleed Al-Maneese, Vice President of the Islamic University of Minnesota and president of the board of trustees of Dar al-Farooq Islamic Center. He is also on the board of trustees of the North American Imams Federation.

These are just four AMJA officials. Its website’s “Our Experts” section lists 47 preachers around the world, mostly residing in America. It also separately lists 41 AMJA members.

“[I]n some cases a husband may use some light disciplinary action in order to correct the moral infraction of his wife, but this is only applicable in extreme cases and it should be resorted to if one is sure it would improve the situation. However, if there is a fear that it might worsen the relationship or may wreak havoc on him or the family, then he should avoid it completely,” Siddiqi is quoted as saying.

“Allah is our objective, the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader, Jihad is our way, and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations”.

Hardly peaceful, as attested to by the current violence in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East on the borders of Israel.

The Peculiar case of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center

In June 2009, the Boston Jewish community, Massachusetts Governor Derval Patrick and former Boston Mayor Tom Menino welcomed the opening of the $22 millionIslamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC) allegedly built with with funds from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. Those allegations spurred a suit by the ISBCC in 2005, against several plaintiffs. They included The David Project and then founder Dr. Charles Jacobs, Steve Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism,The Boston Herald American and Fox News TV channel WFTX in Boston. Jacobs went on to found Americans for Peace and Tolerance. The suit was dropped in 2007 by the ISBCC leaving the plaintiffs to foot $2.0 million in legal defense fees. ISBCC is controlled by the Muslim American Society (MAS), a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate.

The ISBCC sponsored a Mosque across the Charles in Cambridge. Among its attendees were the Tsarneav brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhor the perpetrators of theBoston Marathon Bombing. Another was Aafia Siddiqui aka ‘Lady Al Qaeda ‘ a convicted terrorist serving a term of 86 years for being an al Qaeda courier and financier. She was captured by US troops in Afghanistan in an attempt to kill them. She was a Pakistani scientist and distinguished graduate of both Brandeis and MIT. Another ISBCC attendee was an American Muslim pharmacist Tarek Mehanna of Sudbury, Massachusetts who was convicted in 2012 for providing material support for Al Qaeda and is now serving a 17.5 year term. He was involved in planning a Nairobi style mall attack in the US . Another ISBCC attendee and colleague of deceased Tamerlan Tsarneav, was Ibragrim Todaschev. Todaschev was killed by an FBI agent and Massachusetts state troopers in his Orlando, Florida home in May 2013. He confessed to perpetrating, along with the late Tamerlan Tsarneav, a ritualistic murder of three men in suburban Waltham, Massachusetts on 9/11//11; two of them were fellow Jews.

Now while Massachusetts Governor Patrick warmly welcomed the ISBCC Mosque opening in 2009, their current Imam, Suhaib Webb, an American convert and former Oklahoma convicted felon, was disinvited from the ecumenical service at Holy Cross Cathedral in Boston the Friday following the Marathon Bombing on April 15, 2013. A substitute Imam not affiliated with the ISBCC and the Muslim Brotherhood replaced Sheik Webb at the ecumenical service.

The ISBCC has had some very problematic trustees, one of whom will appear at the ICM in a presentation on November 3, 2013 in an Abrahamic Religions event,“God’s Books”, Jamal Badawi.

ISBCC trustee Abdulrahman Alamoudi is serving a 23 year sentence in a Federal prison convicted of being in a murder plot against the Saudi King and laundering funds for Al Qaeda. Another trustee is extremist Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian ‘spiritual leader’ Yusuf al Qaradawi. He was caught on video extolling anti-Semitic hatred during a Cairo Tahrir Square rally in February 2011 after returning from exile in Qatar. Al Qaradawi was famously quoted as saying:

“Conquest through Da’wah [proselytizing] that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through Da’wah.”

Jamal Badawi of Canada, a former trustee of the ISBCC, was named as a un-indicted co-conspirator in the 2007- 2008 Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial in Dallas, Texas over the funneling of upwards of $35 million to Hamas, which is the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Badawi has been an enduring trustee of the Islamic Society of North America and CAIR. He was an attendee at the 1991 Philadelphia Summit of the American wing of the Muslim Brotherhood that created a master plan for subversion of America and spawned the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Badawi has some peculiar beliefs including wife beating and execution of apostates- more on that subject later. Badawi and fellow MB operative, Nihad Awad, Executive director of CAIR will be present for the”God’s Books “ program at the ICM on November 3, 2013. You might consider returning to ask them some pointed questions during the Q+A.

Some things to know about the ICM

As you planning to take busloads of your congregants to visit the ICM here are some things you should know about its leader Imam Bahloul, Shariah versus Jewish Halacha and what the Rambam Maimonides had to say about Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.

Imam Bahloul is a distinguished graduate who holds a Masters in Da’wah – the call to Islam- from the 1,000 year old Sunni al Azhar University in Cairo. He is a specialist in reaching out to unbelievers like you and your congregation endeavoring to convey a version of Islamic doctrine representing it as a religion of peace.

Given the turmoil in the Middle East doesn’t appear to be much evidence of peace or tolerance towards non-Muslims. Two things about the ICM and Imam Bahloul that you ought to know. During the controversy over the building of the ICM, we found with the assistance of Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism screen shots on the Facebook pages of a board member of the ICM, Mosaad Rawash. They contained tributes to leaders of Hamas, the late blind Sheik Yassin and Dr. Rantisi, both assassinated by the IDF. Further, when we sent Imam Bahloul and the ICM board in February 2010, a Freedom Pledge abjuring Shariah death fatwas for apostates, former Muslims, he refused to acknowledge it. When approached by a local group in Murfreesboro in the fall of 2010 to consider a similar pledge regarding Sharia Islamic law concerning apostasy, treatment of women and gays he once again refused an opportunity to sign it.

Now, Imam Bahloul has every right to practice his faith with his members of the ICM under the Freedom of Worship provisions of the First Amendment. When Ms. Deborah Lauter, director of Civil Rights of the Anti-Defamation League was asked about the ICM board member’s support for Hamas, she said it was “irrelevant”. What was important in her view was the ICM freedom of worship and ability under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 to build a mosque wherever they wanted. The ADL backed that up by filing an Amicus Brief in the Murfreesboro Chancery Court proceedings on behalf of its Interfaith Committee on Mosques.

What’s the difference between Sharia and Halacha?

Before we go further, Shariah is not the equivalent of Halacha. It’s not. It is a total system of law controlling every aspect of Muslim life.

Rabbi Jon Hausman of Congregation Ahavath Torah in Stoughton, Massachusetts is qualified to distinguish between the two. In addition to his Orthodox ordination, he also undertook study in Arabic and Qur’an doctrine at the American University in Cairo. He reads and speaks Arabic fluently in addition to English and Hebrew. He wrote an article for our publication, the New English Review,Halacha, Sharia and the Religious Acceptance of Constitutional Governance. Note what Rabbi Hausman said:

In theory, Sharia jurisprudence actually intended to be applicable to Muslims only. Christians [Jews] and other non-Muslims were supposed to be exempt from the provisions of the law; a provision that is not and has never been universally followed. Indigenous Christian and Jewish populations of the Middle East whose communities pre-dated the advent of Islam by centuries later were and are subjected to jizya and other punitive taxes and dissociative treatment. This is a result of their direct or indirect refusal to submit to Islam according the Qur’an and Hadith as applied today. Because in Islam, Religion is State and State is Religion. Islam is political, and is determined to conquer.

Is that the hidden agenda of ICM Imam Bahloul and his board despite their Abrahamic Faith narrative?

What did Maimonides warn Jews about the Prophet Mohammed and Islam?

I’m sure during your rabbinic training you read the commentaries of Maimonides. Perhaps you may be acquainted with his Epistle to fellow Jews in Yemen written in 1172 C.E. to Jacob ben Netan’el al-Fayyemi, who headed the Jewish community in Yemen:

“After him arose the Madman [ha-meshugga] who emulated his precursor since he paved the way for him. But he added the further objective of procuring rule and submission, and he invented his well known religion.”

Then there is this additional comment from the Maimonides’ Iggeret Teiman:

“Remember, my co-religionists, that on account of the vast number of our sins, G-d has hurled us in the midst of this people, the Arabs, who have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us […] Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase and hate us as much as they. Therefore when David, of blessed memory, inspired by the holy spirit, envisaged the future tribulations of Israel, he bewailed and lamented their lot only in the Kingdom of Ishmael, and prayed in their behalf, for their deliverance, as is implied in the verse, “Woe is me that I sojourn with Meschech that I dwell beside the tents of Kedar.” (Psalms 120:5).

Maimonides fled his native Cordoba during the era of the fanatic Berber Almohads who stormed across the Straits of Gibraltar to take over Al Andaluz in Muslim occupied Spain. The Almohads perpetrated some of the more heinous pogroms of Spanish Jewry. Thus, the myth of ” la convivencia ” that medievalists on the faculties of the Jewish Theological Seminary and your own Hebrew Union Seminary have perpetrated is a dangerous historical delusion. After all the Alhambra predated the Almohad occupation of Spain. Maimonides had no such delusions. Neither should you.

Remember the Firebombing of your rabbinic colleague in Nashville?

A final note about the problematic Jewish Muslim community relations in Nashville. A homegrown terrorists that impacted Tennessee was the unfortunate case of Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, formerly Melvin Bledsoe. Bledsoe was a Muslim convert from Memphis who killed an Army recruiter Pvt. Andy Long in June 2009 at a Little Rock, Arkansas Mall as payback for fighting his brothers in the Muslim Ummah in Iraq and Afghanistan. Muhammad was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in July 2011. You may recall that Bledsoe/Muhammad had firebombed the home of an Orthodox member of the Nashville rabbinate, Rabbi Saul Strosberg of Sherith Israel in an attempt to kill Jews.

Then there was the incident captured on video at Vanderbilt U in a Q+A session with Dr. Ahwad Binhazim , part time Muslim chaplain who responded to a question about treatment of gays under Shariah:

Question: Under Islamic law is it punishable by death if you are a homosexual?”
Binhazim said, “Yes. It is punishable by death.”

We hope this letter might equip you for your announced trip with your congregants to the ICM this Sunday.

“I want at least 1,000 to 2,000 to die in one day,” Shahawar Siraj told an NYPD informant.

The Pakistani illegal alien and Muslim bookstore employee was discussing his plans to kill as many New Yorkers as possible. “I’m going to f___ this country very bad.”

But before Siraj and his collaborator could bomb the 34th Street subway station, they were arrested. Their plans to bomb the subway and Macy’s came to nothing. But under Bill de Blasio, the New York Police Department would never have been allowed to lay a finger on them.

Some years later, Ahmed Ferhani was telling an NYPD undercover detective about his plan to bomb churches and synagogues. He talked of blowing up “the biggest synagogue” in Manhattan, dressing up as a Jewish worshiper, planting a bomb and walking away.

What both cases had in common was a lack of external leads. They weren’t Al Qaeda members. Their attacks would have been as much of a shock as the Boston Marathon bombings or the Fort Hood shootings. They were the “lone wolf” Jihadists who have become today’s terrorist threat.

Under Bill de Blasio, the investigations that prevented the mass murder of New Yorkers would never have been allowed. Bill de Blasio, the left-wing candidate for Mayor of New York City, has once again reiterated that he will not allow proactive surveillance of Muslim terror suspects and terror mosques.

“The efforts of surveillance have to be based on specifically specific information,” Bill de Blasio said. The standard of “specifically specific information” would have led to the deaths of countless New Yorkers.

During the primary, Bill de Blasio tried to hide his radical pro-terrorist views by claiming that he wouldn’t interfere with the NYPD’s counter-terrorism efforts. Now that he’s the nominee and ahead in the polls, he feels comfortable enough to tell New Yorkers that he will not allow the NYPD to protect them from Muslim terrorists.

A terrorist attack has to be stopped in one of two ways. Law enforcement can hope that the terrorist will screw up his plot the way that Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber, did. Or they can proactively carry out surveillance and use informants to “trip” the next lone wolf attacker into revealing himself before he kills a dozen, a hundred or a thousand New Yorkers.

If the Boston cops had followed the NYPD’s lead and maintained a steady surveillance of the terror-linked Islamic Society of Boston attended by Tamerlan Tsarnaev and then sent in an informant to probe him after some of his outbursts, the Boston Marathon bombings would never have happened.

New York City didn’t get lucky after September 11. Muslim terrorists haven’t spent the last twelve years sleeping on their prayer rugs.

The only reason a Boston Marathon bombing or London’s 7/7 attacks didn’t happen here was because the New York Police Department kept a constant vigil using informants and proactive surveillance. These are the very measures that the radical Bill de Blasio has promised his Muslim allies he will destroy.

Years ago, it is hard to imagine anyone being able to see into the future to today and predict the complete collapse of leadership in America – but it has come.

On 9/11/2001, I was plodding through the wreckage of the Pentagon as an FBI Special Agent, recovering what was left of fellow Americans in what was left in the sections of the building hit by an airplane commanded by jihadis. Furious at our enemy, I was determined to do all I could to seek out this enemy and destroy him. I could have never imagined that, years later, America’s leaders would give such aid and comfort to our enemies.

As we survey the rubble of American foreign policy and the incoherent domestic agenda, specifically as they relate to the security of America, we discover a most incredible thing – the leadership of both political parties in America, through ignorance, cowardice, and outright treason, are aiding and abetting the very enemy who attacked us in our homeland on this day 12 years ago.

In the last several years we have seen the full authority of the U.S. government support: the Muslim Brotherhood in their quest to take power in Egypt; Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood “rebels” in Libya; the Taliban by holding direct talks with them and trying to appease their “concerns”; and Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood “rebels” seeking to overthrow the regime in Iranian-backed Syria.

At the same time, this Administration continues to give easily identifiable jihadis positions inside our government with access to classified systems within those agencies they work.

Departing FBI Director Robert Mueller III said in a final interview that “jihadis” are a major threat to this country, yet as Director the FBI gave official awards to known jihadis like Mohamed Magid (President of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamic Society of North America), Yahya Hendi (a leader on the Muslim Brotherhood’s Fiqh Council of North America), and so many others. In open testimony to Congress, Director Mueller admitted to being ignorant of the significant fact that the Islamic Society of Boston (a subsidiary of ISNA) where one of the Marathon bombers attended was founded by Al Qaeda financier Abdurahman Alamoudi. During his tenure, Mueller hosted many meetings at FBI HQ with known jihadis such as the leaders of Hamas in America (CAIR) and others.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has proven to be either grossly incompetent or a willful agent of our enemies. Over the past several years she has directly changed or created DHS policy based on the complaints or recommendation of the jihadi leadership from the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. From removing words DHS and other government employees can use to describe the jihad threat (you can’t say “jihadi”) to their “Building Bridges” campaign with the Brotherhood’s Muslim Public Affairs Council, to shutting down all fact-based training regarding the jihadi threat, to defending Muslim Brother Mohammed Elibiary in open testimony before Congress, our enemies couldn’t have it better if Mullah Omar was the DHS chief.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has proven to be no more competent or faithful to his Oath to the Constitution. General Dempsey has demonstrated his willingness to avoid his duties while ensuring the enemy gets a pass within the military by shutting down all training which honestly and factually assesses the enemy. His decision over a year ago to cease all training In the military and “review it” to ensure it was not “offensive” – a move prompted by complaints to the White House from Hamas (CAIR) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council – makes it impossible for the military to understand the real threat we face. General Dempsey may want to keep in mind that the truth is always offensive to those who don’t have it. He may also want to note that when ordered to violate his Oath, he always has the option to step down.

John Guandolo’s new book, “Raising a Jihadi Generation” will be out in the next 10 days or so. This book details the threat for the Muslim Brotherhood network in the United States, their thousands of organizations here, and how they support jihadi operations.

On this week’s episode of the Stakelbeck on Terror Show, we’re on the ground in Boston to investigate Muslim Brotherhood activity in local mosques and what drove the Boston Marathon Bombers to carry out their deadly attack.

BOSTON — U.S. authorities are still piecing together how the two brothers behind April’s Boston Marathon bombing — Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — became Islamic terrorists.

Tamerlan had traveled to al Qaeda hotbeds in southern Russia, where authorities believe he may have met with known jihadists.

Closer to home, he and his brother attended a Boston-area mosque with radical ties.

“The fact is that these fellows attended, blocks from their house, a radical mosque that has been the center of controversy in Boston for 10 years,” said Charles Jacobs, who heads Americans for Peace and Tolerance, a group that has closely monitored Islamic radicalism in the Boston area.

Jacobs told CBN News the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge has seen convicted Islamic terrorists pass through its doors.

“The founder of that mosque, blocks from where the Tsarnaevs lived and where they prayed, was Abdulrahman Alamoudi,” he said. “He is the model of deception in American-Muslim history…”

“He…convinced President Clinton and also President George W. Bush that he was precisely the kind of moderate Muslim leader that America was looking for,” Jacobs said. “In fact, he deceived everyone. He’s now in jail for 23 years for giving money, for funding al Qaeda.

Other worshippers at the Cambridge mosque have included these Islamists:

Aafia Siddiqui, an al Qaeda member convicted of plotting attacks on New York City

Tarek Mahenna, sentenced to 17 years in prison for planning to assault a Boston-area shopping mall with automatic weapons

Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a former trustee of the mosque, is a Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader and terrorist supporter who’s banned from entering the United States.

The Boston bombings demonstrated the impact of such training, Andrew McCarthy, a former New York prosecutor, told The Daily Caller.

“The Boston Marathon was bombed by a jihadist who had been investigated by the FBI … [and was confirmed in 2011 to be] an Islamist, which would have been hard not to do since he does not appear to have made any secret of it,” said McCarthy, who persuaded a New York jury in 1995 to convict “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman for his use of Islamic teaching to spur jihad attacks, including the 1993 attack against the Twin Towers.

But before the bombing, “the FBI closed its file [on Tamerlan Tsarnaev] because it found this did not constitute ‘derogatory information,’” McCarthy said.

McCarthy and other security experts, and even members of the American Islamic community, indicate that a culture of excessive concern for the sensibilities of Muslims supremacists is preventing law enforcement agencies from pursuing jihadists.

Under the federal guidelines, “agents are admonished to discount the possibility that an Islamist’s constitutionally protected abhorrence of the United States might possibly lead to violence,” McCarthy told TheDC.

Even if FBI officials had learned about Tsarnaev’s 2012 trip to a part of southern Russia that is embroiled in a jihadi war, they would not have restarted their 2011 investigation, a government official told the Washington Post in April.

“The FBI investigation into the individual in question had been closed six months prior to his departure from the United States and more than a year before his return. …Since there was no derogatory information, there was no reason to suggest that additional action was warranted,” the official said in April.

On his six-month trip, starting in January 2012, Tsarnaev visited several militant Islamic leaders and mosques in Dagestan, where jihadis are fighting the Russian government, according to several U.S. and Russian media sources.

“The fiasco regarding Boston is a prime example” of how bad training degrades security, said Robert Spencer, an authority on Islamic doctrine who is heavily criticized by Islamic groups in the United States. He noted that even though FBI agents had interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the FBI was unable to identify Tsarnaev in crowd photographs taken before and after the bomb strike.

After the attack, FBI officials also did not ask the main mosque in Boston for help in identifying the suspects, said Nichole Mossalam, a spokeswoman for the Islamic Society of Boston.

“We were the ones who reached out to them … on Friday” once the picture were released, Mossalam told TheDC.

Under the federal guideline, the FBI officials had “no reason to go to the mosque since the [Tsarnaev] brothers don’t show any outward signs in the [street] photos of being Muslims,” said McCarthy.

Because of the guidelines, it would be “a ‘profiling’ scandal to show the pictures at the mosque just because it was a bombing with … no other evidence of connection to Muslims,” he said.

The guidelines, titled “Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Training Do’s and Don’ts,” don’t merely promote respect for free expression but actively promote extremist views by telling officials to sideline experts who “venture too deep into the weeds of [Islamic] religious doctrines and history. … [T]hese topics are not necessary in order to understand the [Muslim] community.”

The guidelines also advise cops, “Don’t use a trainer or training that has received repeated external negative feedback … don’t use training that treats the American Muslim community as a problem rather than as a partner … don’t use training that relies on fear [for example, by citing convictions that show] mainstream Muslim organizations have terrorist ties.”

The training guidelines go so far as to urge federal officials to rely on a political report by the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), a Los Angeles, California-based Islamic advocacy group with extensive ties to jihadists and Islamist groups, including the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-01) read and commented on an article from The Daily Caller on the House floor. The article notes, “The Department of Homeland Security…has shown a keen interest in monitoring and warning about outspoken conservatives, takes a very different approach in monitoring political Islamists, according to a 2011 memo on protecting the free speech rights of pro-Shariah Muslim supremacists.”

Mosques become a state within a state, except for the welfare assistance.

If radicalized means self-segregated, embittered, and angry enough to be ambivalent about the mentorship of jihadists, then America needs to pay close attention to neighborhood Islamic centers. There is a nexus between disaffected Muslims and those who graduate to violence, and twostudies point to the American mosque. Now that another plot has been executed rather than foiled, there is finally overdue focus on the imams who foment resentment and alienation.

We have allowed mosques to serve as citadels, cutting Muslims off from the democratic society outside. When Muslim marriages are arranged, then officiated and filed within the mosque; when large and small contract disputes are adjudicated by a sheikh; when marriages are ended and custody determined by the imam, and financial disagreements assessed by mosque officials, observant Muslims might as well be living anywhere.

Certainly, the conditions for those that live under tight mosque control do not reflect anything that resembles America.

Constitutional rights and due process protections do not penetrate many sharia-observant mosque domains. After speaking with several Muslim individuals seeking to reassert constitutional rights after summary judgments were rendered, it is apparent that what purports to be Islamic arbitration is really more akin to kindergarten sandlot refereeing. The documents reveal that there was no semblance of legal process expected in arbitration proceedings, no conflict of interest disclosures, and no provision for structural fairness rules.

Even Muslim legal scholar M. Ali Sadiqi, writing for the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America, noted that Muslims would have difficulty bringing internal arbitration standards into conformity with American legal principles, since under sharia inheritance rules women are entitled to only one quarter of the estate — and one eighth if there are children.

In Germany, law enforcement authorities now see the Islamic courts as a competitive “shadow justice system,” and complain that sharia-styled tribunals interfere with the government’s duty to administer both civil and criminal justice.

In Britain, Baroness Cox has been working tirelessly for years to see British law reinstated and sharia jurisdiction reversed. During hearings on her bill, now called the Arbitration and Mediation Services Equality Bill, Baroness Donaghy (Labour Party) called the presumed acquiescence of women to unequal and often cruel treatment as “consensual as rape.” A Muslim woman told Baroness Cox:

I feel betrayed by Britain, I came to this country to get away from all this but the situation is worse here than in my country of origin.

From Britain to the Netherlands, Spain, Denmark, France, Germany, and America, it is possible for Muslims to experience no notable difference between life in the West and the conditions that they fled back in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, and Iraq. The only mentionable difference: the generous social welfare programs offered in the Western cultures.

When I inquired of a local imam as to how he identified radicalization and whether he was concerned about it, he tellingly pivoted to accusations that the U.S. government does not do enough for immigrant Muslims.

In contrast, Western-oriented American Muslim Dr. Zuhdi Jasser called out clerics who urge adherents to “focus on their own victimization, patronizingly reminding the rest of America not to be ‘racists’ [or] ‘bigots.’”

Islamic society of Boston

The unquestionably radical nature of the Islamic Society of Boston mosque and its counterpart the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (called “small one” and “big one” by locals) illustrates the worst of Islamist subversion. Whether the Tsarnaev brothers attended to the degree that the mosque was a key part of their radicalization is unknown, but it could not have been a mitigating influence in their conversion to terrorism. The pedigree of convicted terrorists that have emerged from IBS/IBSCC incubation, the close Muslim Brotherhood connections, the terror group ties, and the criminal convictions of leadership figures lead one to wonder how much more radical activism still seethes within this mosque community.

We also have examples of the poisonous rhetoric purveyed at these two mosques. In just one instance, invited imam Abdullah Farooq was videotaped saying that the Patriot Act “permits [government] to come to your door” and “to come anywhere they want and to come after you anytime.” He went on to urge action in the name of Allah against “oppressors,” by “grabbing on to gun and sword … to step out into this world and do your job.”

A 2004 lesson (active link now disabled) that gave tips on disciplining a wife recommended hanging up a whip in plain sight as a deterrent, but not advocating actual physical punishment unless she really needs it.

Sheikh Ahmed Mansour, an exile from Egypt, said that the ISB mosque “was controlled by fanatics.” He likened the atmosphere to the sharia extremism that he left behind: “I left Egypt to escape the Muslim Brotherhood, but I had found it [at ISB].” When Mansour told Fox News that fiery sermons can spur impressionable young men to violence, even if the speaker doesn’t explicitly advocate it, he was warning America that radicalization comes from the rhetoric that cleverly stops short of illegal incitement to imminent violence.

“We don’t debate unprofessional councillors, unprincipled journalists, and self-righteous community organizers; we turn the tables on them”: this is how British planning lawyer Gavin Boby, also known as the “mosque buster”, describes the activity of his organization, the Law And Freedom Foundation. He uses the law to stop the building of mosques in the UK by demonstrating to local councils that the building of a mosque or an Islamic centre is actually in violation of British law. And he succeeds: the count so far is 16 victories out of 17 cases.

Gavin Boby is a 48-year-old planning lawyer from Bristol, South-West England. He deals with planning permissions or zoning permissions.

Like many other people in Britain, for almost 10 years Boby had witnessed the progressive penetration of Islam in his country, but like many other people he watched idly not knowing what to do about it.

It was the same feeling of impotence that most of us shared. But then, a couple of years ago, he had this idea. Many mosques disrupt neighbourhoods and drive out long-time residents. Non-Muslim women in particular are made to feel uncomfortable in those areas. Why not use his legal skills to help local communities resist planning applications for mosques?

The BBC video above the article exposes how corrupt the process of granting mosque planning applications can be, showcasing a session in the Rochdale Council’s planning committee in the North of England, during which councillor Begum does not allow discussion before the vote is taken and rushes the other members to vote.

This is very topical in light of the recent revelations that the Boston bombers’ mosque “has been associated with other terrorism suspects, has invited radical speakers to a sister mosque in Boston and is affiliated with a Muslim group that critics say nurses grievances that can lead to extremism”, has classic jihadi texts in its library, and gave money to two terrorist charities which have been shut down by the U.S. government. But then again, when is something about the violent nature of Islam not topical these days?

Still, this is a good way to introduce the mosque buster’s work. What are mosques? As we know, mosques are not like churches or synagogues, they are far more than houses of worship and contemplation, many of them are centres of jihadist activity that indoctrinate to commit and support violence against infidels. In America, as many as 4 different studies have independently come to the same conclusion that 80 per cent of US mosques “were teaching jihad, Islamic supremacism, and hatred and contempt for Jews and Christians”.

The Law And Freedom Foundation website declares: “A mosque is not merely a place of worship. Islamic doctrine requires the application of Islamic law within its geographical reach.”

In an interview Gavin Boby explains that mosques are being used as the bridgehead, the forefront of the advance of Islam in a territory. What happens in neighbourhoods – usually working class districts which are not used to dealing with officialdom – where a mosque is built is that the area changes forever for its residents, who no longer recognize it and eventually have to move out, due to things like the parking jihad, general harassment, vandalism.

“The parking jihad is” he describes, “soon after the construction of a mosque, people will find no parking space there, their driveway is being blocked or even a car is parked in the driveway inside your property and if you ask them to move their car they’ll say it’s only for an hour.” The parking tends to be used as a way to establish possession and control over the area, of saying: “This is a mosque area, we are the owners now and there’s nothing you can do about it”, and then after that it gets worse until the point when people move out.

“The Koran,” the Bristol lawyer continues, “calls 14 times for the enslavement of non-Muslims, and 3 times for killing the unbelievers wherever they are found. This is obviously against English law. You don’t need to be a good lawyer to fight it but you need to be a very good lawyer to get around it.”

Partly, the mosque buster’s approach is that of finding the contradictions and incompatibilities between Islam and Western fundamental principles (that’s the easy part), and making mosque building and planning regulations become the battleground of these ideological conflicts.

In the same way as Islam is not just a religion but also a political doctrine of supremacy and power, so the mosque is not simply a building of worship but also a political one.

Gavin elaborates:

This is the Islamic doctrine, every mosque is instructed to be based upon the original mosque in Medina, where Muhammad originally in the 7th century set up his religious-political doctrine of social control, and the mosque is a place of government, it is a place where treaties are made, death sentences are passed, armies are blessed and dispatched, it is primarily about political control and it is very much used as a tool of advance. Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey talked about that, the Muslim Brotherhood compared their mosques to battalions and to beehives, where Muslims will gather and then advance, and there’s nothing new about this, it goes back to the 7th century.

So this is the why of the Law And Freedom Foundation’s operation. Now let’s see the how.

Enza Ferreri is an Italian-born, London-based author and journalist. She has been a London correspondent for several Italian magazines and newspapers, including Panorama, L’Espresso, and La Repubblica.

Islamist Watch (IW) maintains an extensive archive of news items on nonviolent Islamism in the Western world. The complete collection can be found here; lists organized by topic are accessible on the right side of the IW homepage.

The IW database includes dozens of articles scrutinizing the many narratives, questions, and controversies to arise in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings carried out by two Muslim immigrants, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Several key developments are highlighted below:

Political correctness at the FBI

Following reports that Russian officials had contacted Washington about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s extremism years ago — warnings investigated and then set aside by the FBI — some suspect that political correctness paved the path to the attack. “The FBI can’t talk about Islam and they can’t talk about jihad,” notes counterterrorism expert Sebastian Gorka, citing policies that de-emphasize radical Islam as a driver of violence. “I have zero doubt it affected their investigation of Tsarnaev,” adds specialist Patrick Poole. Congressmen have voiced concerns as well.

The FBI also dropped the ball prior to the Fort Hood bloodbath. In that case, the Washington field office cautioned its San Diego counterpart that probing Nidal Hasan was a “politically sensitive” subject, and internal emails classified Hasan’s messages to an al-Qaeda operative as mere “research.” Furthermore, building on its record of Muslim outreachfollies, the agency recently caved to Islamists on training and expunged “biased” materials. Its “Guiding Principles: Touchstone Document on Training” declares that if someone belongs to a group that engages in both violence and “constitutionally protected activities,” the FBI must not assume that the person is involved in the former. As columnist Matthew Vadum opines, “It’s not that much of an exaggeration to say that the FBI could not have done anything about Tsarnaev unless he strapped on a suicide vest in front of them, called them ‘infidels,’ and detailed his abominable plans.”

Left: The brutal reality of jihad was displayed on April 15, 2013. Right: The Islamic Society of Boston may appear friendly from the outside, but its history tells a very different tale.

Radicalism at the Islamic Society of Boston

As the authorities trace the Tsarnaev brothers’ road to extremism, some point to the Cambridge mosque they attended. Charles Jacobs of Americans for Peace and Tolerance has stated that “if the story emerges that they were radicalized in America … the Islamic Society of Boston [ISB] and its leaders provide an interesting place to look.” Indeed they do. The ISB’s first president was Abdurahman Alamoudi, now imprisoned in connection with an assassination plot. Muslim Brotherhood cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi was listed among its trustees, and multiple convicted terrorists, including “Lady al-Qaeda” Aafia Siddiqui, prayed on the premises. Sheikh Ahmed Mansour, a reformist Muslim, recently reflected on a past visit: “Their writings and teachings were fanatical. … I left Egypt to escape the Muslim Brotherhood, but I had found it there.”

In positive news, Governor Deval Patrick’s office withdrew an invitation to Suhaib Webb, imam of the affiliated ISB Cultural Center (ISBCC) in Roxbury, to speak at an interfaith service on April 18. The center is managed by the Muslim American Society (MAS), which, according to prosecutors, “was founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” Another ISBCC imam once exhorted congregants to “grab on to the gun and the sword” in Siddiqui’s defense. “Officials who change course when confronted with the facts need to be commended,” the Clarion Project’s Ryan Mauro explains. “Thank [the governor] by contacting his office here.”

Rays of light in the media darkness

While many media outlets downplayed jihad, others were surprisingly candid: USA Today ran a detailed piece on the ISB’s radicalism. The Islamist-friendly Bill O’Reilly blasted Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for denying Islam’s role in terrorism. Bill Maher mocked Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, when he asserted that “it’s not like people who are Muslim who do wacky things have a monopoly on it.” Maher called the idea that all faiths are equal in terms of inspiring violence “liberal bulls—t,” perhaps opening the eyes of viewers who reflexively discount criticism of Islam from the right.

Daniel Pipes sees the Boston bombings as “education by murder,” noting that Westerners “learn best about Islamism when blood flows in the streets.” This process is aided when the bloodshed encourages prominent media figures to overcome inhibitions and speak truthfully about jihad.

Left: Bill Maher asked Brian Levin whether a show about Islam similar to the raucous Book of Mormon could run on Broadway without violence. “Possibly so,” he replied, convincing no one. Right: Ibrahim Hooper admits that revenge attacks against Muslims have been rare.

Post-terror backlash fails to materialize yet again

Amid the predictablehype about anti-Muslim backlash — which almost never occurs — the Associated Press relays this refreshingly frank tidbit: “Muslim civil rights leaders say the anti-Islam reaction has been more muted this time than after other attacks since Sept. 11. … Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations … said his organization has seen no uptick in reports of harassment, assaults, or damage to mosques since the April 15 bombings.”

No surprise here: Muslims in the U.S. actually suffer hate crimes at a lower rate than blacks, Jews, or gays. Blogger Brendan O’Neill sums it up: “Time and again, left-leaning campaigners and observers respond to terror attacks in the West by panicking about the possibly racist response of Joe Public — and time and again, their fears prove ill-founded and Joe Public proves himself a more decent, tolerant person than they give him credit for. What this reveals is that liberal concern over Islamophobia, liberal fretting about anti-Muslim bigotry, is ironically driven by a bigotry of its own, by an deeply prejudiced view of everyday people as hateful and stupid.”